131. Claire Harbour's World Tour: Coaching, Cultures, and Crazy Stories working in 17 Countries & 8 Languages!

My guest today is no ordinary coach. Claire Harbour is a true multi-hyphenate: coach, author, podcaster. She spent the first part of her career in General Management, Consulting & Executive Search in companies like Louis Vuitton and Egon Zehnder and has worked around the world in 17 countries in 8 languages. We are going to talk about this half and also her second half: why she made this move from working in a company to self-employed life and we will also cover her latest venture that has the word ‘love’, yes! It’s called Love Works, which aims to being more love inside companies!

Claire emphasizes the importance of aligning work with personal values and the significance of empathy and human connection in leadership. The interview showcases her passion for enthusiastic, enjoyable, and truthful coaching, as well as her commitment to continuous learning and growth.

Follow Claire on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairemjharbour/
Follow Disrupt your Career the Podcast and get the Book here: https://disrupt-your-career.com/

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Transcript

  Hey, welcome back to the show. My name is Sonal Behl. How are you doing? And today's guest is no ordinary guest. She is no ordinary coach. Claire Harbour is a true multi hyphenate coach, author,  Podcaster, formerly so many years in general management, consulting and executive search in companies like Louis Vuitton and Egon Zender, and has worked around the world in 17 countries in eight languages.

Good Lord. I mean, AI, what does AI have on you, Claire?  Today, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about this half and also this second half that I referred to, why on earth did she make this move from working in a company to the unpredictability  But for now,  Of self employed life and we will also cover her latest venture  that has the word love in its name.

Yes, I kid you not. Her company is called Love Works, which aims at bringing more love inside companies. I am so excited. Claire, this is going to be such a good conversation. Welcome to the show.  

Sonal, thank you so much for having me on. We've been planning this for ages and I'm so glad it's happening now.

It's a real pleasure. I am so  

glad we're making this happen and if only the viewer could look at you right now and your back, like the view behind you looks like a green screen. It is not a green screen. We just said you're somewhere in the middle of Barcelona and Valencia. And this is your life. This is your digital rebel, nomadic life.

And we're going to be getting into that. But before we get there, let's talk about the first 15 years of your career. So my, my ethical stalking on LinkedIn  tells me that you started out in Hong Kong, Philippines. Thailand, London,  and maybe other places, right? In retail and other industries. So talk to us about this part, this part of your career.

And I specifically want to know because the show is called How I Got Hired. Talk to us about maybe one unforgettable role that comes to mind immediately where you feel, wow, gosh, Sonal, I was so lucky to have had that job. Talk to us about how, what that was. How did you get hired 

there? 

Oh, 

fantastic. Well, I would start by saying that without any question, my first official job was the most unforgettable.

Let me explain why. I spent all of my childhood being first of all, raised with three languages and three cultures. So. Fundamentally interested in others and what makes people tick and what their stories are. And I was also I think dosed with a very large version of a sense of justice from very early on.

So I really spent most of my childhood years writing stories and planning to be a journalist.  And I went to university. Claire, I'm just 

going to pause you. You said three languages. What languages are these? And how did this come about? And where? So, French, Spanish and 

English. Why and how? My mom is of a background with a teeny tiny bit of French blood.

She's a Francophone, Francophile, French teacher. I'm speaking about her in the present tense. She actually died a couple of years ago, but she's still very much alive in, in the way we all live. And she decided that since we lived in the States when I was a little girl, that she would join that melting pot culture and and speak with me and then my sister in French, as opposed to any other language that she might choose.

My dad is an. Irish English person, if that makes sense, whose family had some Spanish links, including his older sister who married a Spanish basketball player. And I spent my summers with my cousins in Spain. So all in all, I got to speak those three languages from a very, very early age and to feel that I belonged at least partly to them.

To each of the three cultures, but was always feeling a little bit of an outsider in each one and very curious about what was going on with  individuals and groups and cultures.  

Yeah, I mean, 

I think definitely third culture kid and probably more curious than most. You know, my, my biggest thing was to, you know, observe people, whether on a beach or in a street or in a station or, or in a shop and just try to imagine who they were.

I also used to tell absolutely dreadful completely mendacious stories about who I was and where I came from, but that was part of the fun. It's like this imagination thing about. What could be the story inside the person, how might it develop? And that's what led me ultimately to get so interested in people and organizations. 

Well, let's come back to your question. Where did you grow up? Where did you grow up, though? 

So I was born in London. My parents moved when I was three months old to Princeton, New Jersey, where my dad was a research physicist. And worked with some of the great big names that we've all heard of. And beyond that, then at some point we came back to the UK, we dipped in and out of France.

But it was all relatively unexciting,  from my perspective at least, until after university when I chose to go further away. But we'll get to that in just a moment. So you were asking, you know, about this unforgettable role and how I got it. So as I said, I spent my whole childhood, my whole teenage years, my whole going to university with the plan of becoming the next Christiane Amanpour.

Basically, I wanted to be you know, the foreign reporter out in war zones, redressing the injustices of the world, telling stories doing important work. And then one morning, literally as I was filling in on paper, as we did then, this was  1982 filling in the application form for the BBC graduate scheme I found myself sort of being a bit more reluctant to fill it in than I had imagined I might be.

And couldn't quite work out why, so in great student age procrastination tradition, I went out for a walk to try to just, you know, forget it and think about something else. And it was while I was walking that I had this very clear image, which was, Claire, you are such an idiot. You have this great idea of going off to war zones and doing all that stuff, and yes, sure, you'd probably be technically competent to do it, but you're the kind of person who cries when she sees strangers saying goodbye to each other at stations.

How on earth are you going to deal with that thing emotionally? Clearly you aren't, clearly therefore you should stomp your foot right now and say, right, well, if I can't do that kind of journalism, then I won't do journalism at all.  And that was where I left it for the morning. Tore up the BBC graduate program application form and Oh dear, now what? 

Because I had built my whole life, really, on assuming that that was what I was going to do.  Luckily,  although I think I was incredibly immature in many respects,  As we all are, as we all are. Absolutely, indeed, we are. But I was, I was definitely. But what I did somehow figure out how to do was to think about What the experience was I wanted out of my career, not just the what, but the, the how and in what conditions and that kind of thing.

And I realized that what I wanted, having traveled and being exposed to so many different countries and cultures already, what I really wanted was to go further away. To be culturally challenged and to be involved with, you know, lots of different kinds of people. That was really all I knew. And I had no role models in my family who were in business or management or anything else, but I kind of figured out.

You know,  put together little by little a picture in which I could see myself joining some kind of a graduate scheme and some kind of a company about which I knew nothing. At the time we didn't have computers, we didn't have internet, just a fairly useless career center and the university. But, You know, I got quite bold about looking for things and thought, well, what, what is there to lose?

And what I wanted was excitement. So I came across this company called the Swire Group, which nobody around me had ever heard of, but they are in fact, one of the largest holding companies. And you know, they're on the on the Hong Kong stock exchange. They're an enormous player in, in Southeast Asia and beyond.

And perhaps the thing they're most known for is Cathay Pacific Airlines.  This company had a recruitment brochure. I think it was on an A5 and it had, you know, some pictures of some jolly posh looking young men. And the words of what they were looking for were these, we prefer our young men. to come from either Oxbridge or a significant officer background in the army. 

So I read that and thought, well, there's a challenge. I'm not having any of that. This place sounds exciting. I get to go straight out to the far East. I get to go very quickly into a management job. It's a sink or swim culture. I think I'm pretty good at that. You know, I'd love to work with a bunch of guys.

I decided I wanted to study a language in school that I couldn't study in my old girl's school. So I got to go to the boys school down the road. I was in the second year only of women in my college in Cambridge. I went into a sport that was traditionally a men's sport and none of that had ever really held me back.

So I wrote them a pretty bolshie letter. Basically saying semi politely, Hey, it's about time you changed your policies and wouldn't you like me to come and work for you? And somehow I think I hit the right space at the right time. And they said, yeah, come along and have an interview. So the interview process went on and I.

used my various experiences and wildness and probably a little dose of charm to persuade them that they might want to give me a chance. And they did.  So I joined a cohort of either fresh graduates indeed from Oxbridge or from the army with one other girl in it, which was lovely. She's a friend to this day, Nikki.

And and off we went to Hong Kong. And I was incredibly lucky because beyond the fact of having gotten to this company that theoretically wouldn't, wouldn't give me a job I got to go and play in a smaller subsidiary. Where I got to do really fun and responsible things. Most of my friends went into the airline or one of the shipping lines where they were very small cogs in a big machine. 

I got to go and play in a small company that was involved basically in a fairly boring, but important procedure of liaising between. retailers and producers performing sort of production and quality  topics and themes and activities throughout Southeast Asia. So I started in Hong Kong and you know, the idea was you shadow a few managers for a little while and then they give you a real job.

So I found myself aged  22 being told by the very wise, old managing director of this company, Claire, you're obviously bored by shadowing managers. So I'm going to give you a real job. I'm going to give you I can't remember what it was literally hundreds of thousands of meters of excess fabric, luxury fabric that we have from overproduction  in some of our work.

And I'm going to give you a designer and I'm going to give you a budget and you're going to launch a fashion brand in Hong Kong and retail it.  Oh my gosh. I know, just extraordinary. I mean, it was like the biggest piece of manna from heaven you could imagine. So that's what I got to do for the first few months.

And then this opportunity came up to go and run our subsidiary in the Philippines. So I found myself there managing a group of maybe 30 very competent, very brilliant people who all knew a great deal more about the industry than I did, who were very kind to me and sort of indulged me in my Useful attempts at being a good manager  and then went on to do the same kind of thing in, in Thailand and then, and so on.

So, you know, that was undoubtedly the luckiest break I ever had in a career. It ultimately wasn't the right fit for me in every respect, but that doesn't matter. The point is that I got to experiment in ways that I couldn't have imagined. A year or two beforehand in terms of doing exciting, interesting, relatively important stuff to work with people who were generally very open to having a manager, you know, I hate to say it, but in the time and possibly even now, there was still a perception of, you know, she must be superior cause she's white, which is dreadful.

But it was also a reality. So there was a certain amount of. You know, respect that was just afforded to me because I was coming in on that ticket. You know, she's the graduate trainee from head office. She's here to learn how to be a manager. We will indulge her. But of course that didn't mean that some people didn't try to play naughty tricks, but it also gave me, gave me huge scope to start playing with the bits of business that I found.

Inherently and naturally important like people. I would never have wanted an HR role. And indeed I went into general management so early that it, it didn't particularly come onto my horizon, but I found myself naturally doing things like saying, wow, I'm in the Philippines. There are all these incredibly you know, bright, beautiful.

Perfectly fluent in English, technically competent,  and rather brilliant people working in my organization. What if we started taking some of them and putting them into the less developed parts of the organization elsewhere and had them bring some of their competence and, and their their ability also to learn and become better leaders.

So I started this whole thing of, you know, sending Cheeto off to Thailand and Joy off to Southwest China. And all these people going off to bring their own wisdom and to learn and develop as they grew. And of course, you know, that, that became something in big companies, you know, whether you call it a global mobility program or whatever, but I was just doing it because it seemed like a good idea and it was fun. 

And I guess that intuitive sense of what's important was there from the beginning. I just didn't know how to put a name on it or necessarily to be particularly strategic about it, but it was a great education. 

Amazing. What a, what a start. My mind is officially blown and I, I, I need to recap this for the listener because even the listener is like, what the what?

Like,  what did we just hear? So first of all, first of all, I'm imagining you as this 18 year old Christiane Amarpour wannabe. Right. This is we were talking about age this is close to 40 years ago. So I don't even know if Christiane Amanpour was, was known, but you were already, you know, I think 

she was, I think she was, or she was just about known enough.

I mean, she wasn't, you know, The head of anything at the time. But there was, you know, there were other people like Kate Adie in the UK. I mean, you know, big, few, few and far 

between, but like, you can't be what you can't see. You had started seeing  the curiosity, you know, which you've had since you were a child, definitely got the better of you, but I want to pause here and I want to I want to applaud you for the  unbelievable.

Incident of self coaching that you just told us and you displayed without maybe knowing you were doing that. Oh, completely not. You said you 

were, 

yeah, but when you were filling out that application form for the BBC, that was intuition. Something was telling you it is not right, but you couldn't put your finger on it because you wanted it for such a long time and everything on paper said go for it and you pulled away, right? 

That takes courage because we are, you know, told about so much fear and scarcity and urgency. Hurry up. There's a deadline. Don't wait. You might be too late, blah, blah, blah. You instead pull away and And what do you do? You go for a walk, right? It's something that I say, I seriously say this to all my clients.

I practice this myself, even if it's raining, get some nature, just get out. You know, just get the fresh air and you come back complete 180 degree shift.  And then you see this ad. I love this because so many times this serendipity comes to,  Comes to us in very unlikely forms. They come to us in mentors who are unlikely mentors.

Somebody said a comment somewhere. You heard this on a movie or documentary. In your case, an employment ad back in the day when everything was on paper. And you were like, who are these posh guys? And where are they going? And just because they're men, that's just because they're no women, that never stopped you.

It was never even a, like, that is the fearlessness of youth. I love that.  But even though we say fearlessness of youth, there is some trepidation, there is some fear.  It didn't hold you back. You went and you applied, you wrote that bold letter, and they were like, who the hell is she? Okay. Let's meet her.  And one thing leads to another and your general manager in the Philippines and doing all these amazing things in Hong Kong, you have luxury fabric and you're designing products, which I'm guessing came in handy when you get hired for Louis Vuitton.

But it 

certainly was an influencer and then coming to me. 

Yeah. And thank you for acknowledging the, the things that some things we are born with, which we can't help. Right. One is race. It just happens to be where we are born, what we look like, the languages we speak, depending on where we are. And may have been a factor.

Yes, but it doesn't take you that far. If it's pure, you know coming from  privilege after a while, it's, it's, it's credibility. It's, it's a meritocracy. This is absolutely amazing. And all this work you did 15 years. So I'm guessing, you know, as a 22 year old, you're leading all these people. I also want to give them credit because it takes humility, right?

To be led by. It does. And I'm still 

very close, very close to some of them and if we can deviate for just a moment, I'll tell you a little story. There was this wonderful woman who worked for me in the Philippines, Dec, she's called. And she came to visit. We've stayed in touch. A lot of us have from that group and time have stayed in touch.

And she came to visit me when I was living in England a few years ago. And we sat down and I think she stayed for two nights and we sat down certainly the first night and drank a little bit too much wine and got pretty sincere, pretty vulnerable. And I shared with her at one point in the conversation that I feared that I had probably not really done a very good job when I was there and that I was immature and probably fundamentally a little bit too selfish to be doing a great job.

And she said, Claire, stop.  She said, of course you were young. You know, you were younger than me. You were younger than many of us, but what you brought above anything else was empathy and kindness.  And that sort of suddenly made me go, okay. And you know, I, I know that, for example, my ability to be deeply financially analytical wasn't something I developed there.

I'm not sure I've ever developed it that much, but actually it wasn't, it also wasn't the issue. The company was in a slightly sad, toxic state when I inherited it. It didn't need deep financial analysis. It needed trust and empathy and respect and, and self respect to go out and build the business.

So in fact, I was fortunate that bringing. empathy and kindness was what was needed. I may not have done nearly such a good job if what they needed was a financial restructuring. In fact, I suspect they wouldn't have sent me to do that if that had been the context. But it is interesting how An ecosystem creates itself through the different energies of the different players in it but also according to its needs.

And if you, I think if you tune in to what that is and what those are, then things can go very well without necessarily being Very experienced or very talented, but just being sensitive to the context in the situation. 

I love this because this is so beautiful. So many times we are told  to cover up parts of us that  people say, nobody wants to hear that.

It's embarrassing. It's giving me so much cringe, so nobody wants to see a grown woman. Cry. Nobody wants to see a grown man cry. Just as an example, because you said earlier when the self coaching, when you did, you said, ah, you cannot see two people say goodbye at the train station when they're crying.

You can't see them without crying. I'm exactly the same. I'm such an empathy crier. Even if I see a YouTube video for the third time and the guy starts crying, I will start.  So what on earth are you thinking about going to war and reporting?  It's part of what makes you human. It's actually an asset of yours and and I love that that actually Not only came in handy, but it helped you to emerge as a stronger leader.

They did not want another fist thumping sort of masculine energy in that situation. And, and they doused it with kindness, love, and empathy. And we are going to talk about that because we're going to talk about your, your, your business, but this is amazing. So, you know, Claire, some people might say you were at the top of your game. 

Everything seemed to have been going great. Louis Vuitton at one point had hunted you and you posted on LinkedIn. I remember it was almost a year ago of this beautiful picture of yours with all these luxury sort of. Oh, back when I was young and beautiful. Oh  my gosh. Oh my gosh. And, and all of that beautiful stuff.

And here  you are. What  I want to know  your move that that sort of, I want to talk to you about this decision making process because now you have the luxury of time and space what exactly made you leave all of that behind and go full time? What did you know it had to be coaching and what was it? And also let's get practical here because you know love makes the world go round.

Yes. Yes. So does. So does money, money, money has lots of good, we do a lot of good things with money. We have freedom of time. We have freedom of location talking to you right now in Spain, a few months ago, you were in Mexico and you know, you're like traveling around the world in South of France, all of that stuff.

We don't do this purely on likes and, you know, ego boosts. We, we need, we definitely need money. So back in those early days, what was it like when you had to sign up? Paying clients because we need that in our company. Mm-Hmm. . Absolutely. We would love to like learn more from you because so many listeners are on that brink.

Sure. Should I, shouldn't I? And we learn from your 

story. So I'd, I'd love to take a step a little further back and talk about the fact that actually my transition to being an independent was pretty ugly and messy and not necessarily planned. And I think getting that out on the table. should be reassuring to a lot of people who may be in ugly, messy situations themselves and not necessarily be able to see  the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

You mean 

it wasn't like beautiful clouds parting and there was violet. Funny that. Yeah. 

Yeah. So I guess several things played into it. First of all even from the very beginning, even in those exciting years at Swire, when I was doing all those fun and interesting and challenging things,  I kind of knew that I didn't really fit in.

I didn't fit in perfectly to the power politics and the games of corporate culture.  And I was particularly  blessed with a tendency to want to improve everything that I came across including other people's work and business and was a little too willing to speak up about that. Probably not in a particularly mature way.

I dare say that many people would have thought of me as a, you know, busybody upstart. But it was, I know. Coming from a genuine desire to improve things for everybody, but not always welcome in the time and the way that I would do this kind of thing. So,  you know, whether it was at the Swire Group or whether it was after my MBA and in LVMH or whether it was in, you know, many of the other places that I worked before fully becoming independent I never quite felt that I fit in totally. 

What does that feeling 

like when you are working, you look successful, you're doing all the things, but internally, you know, something is not right. And you're saying, I don't fit in. What was that like?  

I think sometimes it was a very, very clear observation that, you know, the group seems to be behaving differently to the way both I am and the way I would like to be.

So sometimes very stark physical observations of, of different types of behaviors, whether it's, you know, all going off to lunch together to a place that I think of as boring, or whether it's about being more consultative with each other, more collegiate than I was feeling I was probably doing.

Always more entrepreneurial and less collegiate willing to, you know, take risks that might separate me from the crowd that doesn't always go down. Well, in every organization, sometimes just feeling that, you know, comments I would make or ways I would show up, didn't land in the way that I would have hoped or imagined and, and I guess a lot of it might in the end be reflected by the fact that. 

In most cases, in most corporate jobs that I had,  while I got on perfectly well with the people that I worked with, I didn't really make friends there. , which I think is something that I didn't necessarily see as an important lever at the time. But with hindsight, you know, if I'd been more similar to these different groups of people, I would've empathized more with them and stayed more connected with them over the long term.

That's, 

that's really the, so you're saying, I was visiting the DEI, the inclusion. You didn't necessarily feel included in the 

Yeah, but I would not for a moment put that on the organizations. But yeah, I didn't feel included and I probably wasn't making much effort to, to make myself included either. So feeling, feeling that I didn't fit in.

Often feeling strongly and deeply the imperfections of whatever organization I was working in and wishing it were better, but not being really in a position to change much then the immediate context I ended up in. Then it was when I was at Egon Zender. Which has a particularly  narrow, very beautiful, but narrow type of culture, which they themselves describe as idiosyncratic.

In fact, there's a Harvard Business case written about about Egon Zender, which refers quite a lot to this. And, and I faced a very important crucible moment, really, with them. When. I'd been there about a year. I was loving doing search. I was loving having the impact on people's and organizations lives.

And was doing a pretty good job, even though I wasn't. Even after 39 interviews, I wasn't really feeling like them, you know, and they were not really feeling that I was like them, they realized little by little that they'd probably made a mistake. a bit of a mistake in hiring me. Which of course you could argue is ironic.

Because they are recruiters after all. But with many, many years of hindsight, what I've come to see is that actually it was my fault. I acted my way into that job. I wanted it really badly. And so as I went through those 39 interviews actually I,  you know, got a grip on what sort of people these were and, and pretended to be like them. 

And it came back and slapped me in the face in the end because it got me the job. It got me into a profession that I absolutely loved and continued after leaving them, but it meant that there was actually a huge gap between who they all were, very similar and very idiosyncratic and me once again on the outside.

And it's actually thanks to the managing partner at the time, a lovely man called John Grumbach, who sat me down one day and said, look We think we probably have made a mistake and we know you do great work. The clients love you. We actually love you, but you don't fit that well here. And you could stay you could stay, but we'd probably never make you a partner and being in this organization is all about making partnership.

Or, you know, we could recommend you all around town and give you a big fat check and let you go. And he did this because he knew I was about, about to get myself into a big mortgage. And by, you know, a different house and, you know, he stepped in at the right time and he was incredibly kind, but very honest. 

And so, you know, what was that like hearing that it was, it was shocking, but also a relief. You know, I think I probably cried for about half an hour and then went, thank God that's over. The truth is, the truth 

is out eventually. Yeah.  

So I took the big fat check, which  very big and very generous. And they did indeed recommend me around town.

But actually what happened was a couple of the clients that had been working with me said, you know what, you're leaving. We want to work with you. We don't care about them. We want to work with you. So I ended up starting my first little search company. That's a juicy little part, which is not on LinkedIn.

It's well, I think it, yeah, it isn't. It's so far back. I love that. So this is how long did you do this, the search? So, well, that's an interesting question. Because I did it on and off for really quite a few years. In the interim, I moved to rural France with a husband, a newborn and a two year old  and carried on working with these clients and, you know, juggled everything.

Remotely, remotely back in the day? Yes. So I was working from home in 1999. And I've, and I've never actually worked in an office ever since then. So COVID didn't really pose any big logistical problems for me at all.  

Such a disruptor, such a disruptor. Back in the day when people didn't have the concept of trust in leadership, that if you can't see her, she's on a beach somewhere.

She's not working. Exactly. Nobody 

cared. Somehow. I mean, I guess I had the benefit of two clients that came. Because they already knew me so they couldn't trust me. But you know, at that stage, honestly, we decided to make the move away from the rat race in London, but both of us, my ex husband is an architect and, and I was doing this, the search work, you know, we were neither of us planning to just farm the land and be self sufficient.

We were planning to continue our careers, just in, in a different way. But you know, that notion that this wasn't necessarily the end of my life in or close to corporate entities was definitely there. But the bit I didn't particularly expect was finding myself a few years later with four children aged three, five, seven, and nine.

Suddenly divorced which was absolutely not on my menu. It was actually a good idea. It wasn't my idea, but it was, it was a good thing in the end. We weren't really suited, but we made four amazing children. So all in all good. But at that point, suddenly I found myself alone with these four children needing to move to the city, having no money, that was the slightly less pretty part of it was that financial support dried up pretty quickly.

So I needed to get a job. And I was stuck in, when you said moving to 

the city, you were in countryside. We were in the, 

in the absolute countryside, nearest neighbor, three miles away. Which which part of France is this? So down in the South, in the point that goes down towards Spain on the Barcelona side.

So, you know, and then you, when you say move to the city, we moved to Toulouse. 

to lose and then started looking.  

Yeah, and you know, the reality was looking for the kind of jobs that I had before in a provincial French city was, was not going to happen. So here comes the next bit of great serendipity and huge trust.

I don't know. Had a really fortuitous meeting with somebody over a dinner who said, you should really set up on your own. You know, so much about culture and development and all these things. You should set up some sort of consultancy. And I almost did it, but something held me back. I think not least the risk of entrepreneurship, full entrepreneurship.

With three young children, four, four young children and, and not much stability. So I decided to cast around and look at, you know, what companies might be doing this kind of thing and what might be an opportunity for me. So I come across this company called TMA world who do this sort of cross cultural consulting and training.

And I look at some of the things they do. And once again, I get into my, Oh, I think that they could improve this or that. So I write them a, you know, 10 line email saying, I love what you do. I think if I, you know, if I were a potential client, I'd buy it. And by the way, you're a bit thin on the ground and in Southern Europe, would you like some help?

Half an hour later, I get a phone call and two days later I have a job. Again, never met any of these people face to face until about six months later. So extraordinary trust on their part, a bit of trust and probably quite a lot of happy go luckiness on my side. He was like, I need a job. These guys seem okay.

Let's give it a go. And I have nothing to lose.  Exactly. I think I wrote down in my notes, you know, what do I have to lose? What's the worst thing that could happen?  So,  in fact, the funny thing was that  Technically, that wasn't a salaried job. It was actually, I was set up as an independent and they paid me for the days I did, typically were a six out of five.

But it, you know, it was my first taste of setting up a company, being in that entity of independence. But it was easy independence. It was sort of tethered and, and, you know, You know, safe, safeguarded independence.  What happened was by the time we got to 2011, I was in a role in partnerships and strategy that really was very long in terms of its cycle to create sales and business, and we survived 2008, 2009, 2010, but by, by, by then it just was untenable to keep me.

So I was thrown into the situation where I had nothing. Again, kindly thrown. I remember actually, you know, talking of leaders who cry. My, my one of the founders of the company came to see me in Toulouse and he did cry while he was telling me how sad he was that we'd have to go our separate ways.

Anyway a couple of years of very big insecurity.  Wasn't a great time to be unemployed. I wasn't in the right place. So not 

to forget you know, children getting into the teenage years, people say, Oh, it gets easier. It gets harder, 

man. It gets harder. It gets harder. And I had two of them going to national ballet school, which, although they gave them huge scholarships, wasn't free.

So there was a lot to think about. So anyway, all through those years I had been very close to a friend of mine, Jane, who was one of the first.  Company or corporate coaches ever trained. She's six or seven years older than me, which makes her really old because I'm very old already. And I used to go and stay with her in Barcelona and.

Although I wasn't supposed to, I would listen to her coaching her clients. And, and I would think, God, that is just the coolest profession, but obviously I couldn't do it because I'm far too much of a consultant. I'm far too much of the person who can see the answer and wants to tell people the answer. So I told myself this story for years that.

I couldn't possibly be a coach.  And then once again, serendipity comes along and a friend of a friend invites me to this mad party down in South of Spain at the beach for three days. I hardly know her but my friends there too, and actually my son's there with me as well. And we have a lot of conversations.

The friend and the friend of the friend of both Chinese. And this woman had a company in London where she was basically flogging coaching packages. To Chinese graduates to help them to figure out who they were, what was important to them and how to get a job. And how basically to stay in the UK or, or sometimes in the U S or Australia. 

And she called me a couple of weeks later and said, look, I am at capacity with my in house coaches, and I wonder if you could do some coaching for me. I'm like, well, that's really flattering. Thank you very much. But you know, I'm not sure I'd be very good be I'm not trained. See, I have no.  experience. But D yeah, I have some time and I definitely need some money.

And you know, she persuaded me that I could try and learn on the job. So I said, well, if it's, if it's with those caveats, then why not?  So I actually got into this great school of coaching, mostly self taught though. I did do some very deep and formal training eventually, but I learned on the job. And I learned  by coaching 2000 clients in three years, it was an absolute sausage factory.

And, and that was just the most tremendous green training ground for me. I was forced to learn, I realized that I could do coaching I did some fantastic training on the phone with a Dwayne of coaching, who was part of the creation of the ICF and, and worked with all kinds of, of great names and eventually decided that, you know, it was probably time to coach people a little further up the scale of seniority than, than 21 year old Chinese graduates who were very sweet but typically.

Yeah. Didn't actually have a particularly demanding process in any respect. 

This is amazing, Claire. And here we are in 2024 and you're flying around the world, doing what you love. Cat sitting, dog sitting. I don't know. Talk to us about this because someone who's listening today, like, what did she just say?

So you don't have sort of like that. Fixed home base. You are living your life. And when you say old, old is, yeah, it's a state of mind. Oh yeah. I, I think you're way more fearless than some 22 year olds, 23 year olds. I know. 

Oh, you know what? I think almost. Everybody over 40 is more fearless than most 22 year olds, but that's, that's a separate debate.

Let's not  go too far down that. 

But how did this come about? Talk to us about this. We were chatting before 

we pressed record, you know, COVID and talk 

to us. 

You know, the point is that when I had four children who were, you know, Then obviously my ability to work completely freely and to do exactly what I wanted professionally was somewhat tethered.

I never let it hold me back too much. In fact, I used it as a, as an excuse to create filters about the kinds of clients that I wanted to work with. Which was great. you know, early education in that respect. And once they had all gone or started to go off to their various destinations in work and life, then obviously I knew that Empty Nest was, was going to be happening.

And I started thinking about what that might look like. And I made some beautifully made plans.  And then COVID came along. So actually the beautifully made plans didn't happen. But part of what did happen was that I didn't go to Africa with Stanford as I had planned to, and I ended up looking after my mother who was in her home in France and was able to stay in her home until she died.

Not least because I was there, though I won't take any great big triumphant you know, medals for that. It didn't necessarily bring out all of the best in But I was able to be there. And I guess that The experience of being suspended in that time, which so many of us were in one way or another, but I was also suspended in place because that wasn't really where I'd been planning to be. 

The suspension gave me the opportunity to experience, gosh, you know, it's really quite nice to live somewhere that, you know, practically speaking, doesn't cost me anything.  Emotionally speaking, doesn't tie me. Practically speaking, again, doesn't, you know, doesn't implicate me in getting the roof fixed if it breaks.

And I started to think, wow, you know, for a few years, this could be a really nice way to try to prolong my life and not my life, my way of living or as a way of living. And I could also see that, you know, my four children were in four different countries, so we weren't going to be having lunch at home on Sundays altogether.

And so I started to think, well, you know, what might that look like? And serendipitously, again, Yeah. Somebody, a friend of a friend asked me to look after their dogs while they were on holiday. And that felt like a really nice experience. I got to live in their mansion on a bay overlooking the sea, just south of Barcelona.

I thought, gosh, you know, I wonder if I could do more of this. And sure enough, I found ways to do more of this. And so right now I've been spending for the last few years, three months out of every six. In this beautiful place that I'm in, in Spain and the other two chunks of three months. And I tend to spend some time in France, some time in the UK, and some time off doing something interesting or exciting in a, in a more exotic part of the world.

I just came back from two months in Africa, where I was working with a couple of leaders and organizations there advising them.  And for now, this nomadic lifestyle suits me well, though I am cognizant of the fact that within a couple of years max, probably, I'll be wanting to create a family home base again, but that'll be done at a time when some of my children, who are currently very far away will be more decided about where they're going to settle as well.

Beautiful, Claire. This is beautiful because, you know, you said, yes, you know, you had a little bit more freedom, kids left the home. It's, it's, it's, it has to happen. It's unavoidable the empty nest  and yet society, friends, well meaning family and friends tell us, but you're single and you're a woman.

Don't do this. What is wrong with you? Have a base and stay put. Have some roots. And you were like, thank you very much.  I appreciate the advice, but I'll do whatever the F I want. Like, I don't know. And you decide this and serendipity. I love this because this is probably the fourth or fifth time you're saying this. 

It's just kind of you're wishing it it's put out and Deepak Chopra calls it I'm getting a bit woo here. Deepak Chopra says there is no such thing as coincidence. He said the definition of coincidence is it's a will of the universe. It's like you said you wanted this. Let me show you this. Let me show you this.

And every time I think Claire. You've said yes,  you have said yes, you may not have known all the answers, you didn't have all the ducks in a row, even right now, you're saying, maybe in a couple of years, this will change your you, you've got that sort of, we'll figure it out, sort of growth mindset, you're living it, right?

It's so important most of the practice doesn't mean that sometimes 

I don't sit there going, 

Oh, my 

God, what have I done? Or what have I not done? But I'm sure 

it's not without its challenges when the roof is leaking and you're in the middle of Accra, Ghana, you know, what is somebody else's roof so they can fix it.

No, no. When it's your own room, for example, back home. Right. So all of that, all of that stuff you're, you're figuring that out. So this is, this is  such a great example of. We are the limit. We are the ones who place limits. Nobody, we do not let anybody else place limits on us. So now let's talk about, because you talked about coaching  and I saw on your LinkedIn profile, you say that you help people.

And I see that, I think you help women a lot, but I think people in general,  to tackle massive challenges of transformation  and to escape the chains of other people's expectations. And you're probably coming from, you Pull on like living this in your own life. And I highly recommend that people get your book, disrupt your careers.

I'm going to link it in the show notes if they want to learn more, but to sort of give a taste to the listener right now, talk to us about how do you do this, you know, tackling massive challenges and maybe could you share some very practical advice  who with people who are currently feeling lost, confused, 

a bit scared.

So I think it's worth starting by saying that many people don't really realize that they're living their lives according to other people's rules and playbooks. It's often parents or society, a particular culture, maybe it's teachers, maybe it's the spouse, even one's children have expectations about who we should be or how we should show up.

And I saw this a lot when I was doing that time coaching all those young children. Chinese people, the pressure on them to work for the big four or a globally known brand was tremendous. And actually when I would challenge them, they, you know, I'd say, so what do you know about big four? Oh, I know nothing.

But you know, they came saying, I want to get a job at the big four. So, you know, massive tension between what is.  Sort of projected onto people as expectations that should be fulfilled and seeing that those might not necessarily be what's actually going to be good for them. So when I work with a client or a group of clients, I first really start by trying to understand whose expectations are actually showing up in that person's life and to explore with them how relevant or valuable those expectations actually are.

are turning out to be for them.  And don't necessarily tell them that that's all wrong, but just showing them that they may not be doing all of this of their own volition. And getting them to think around that is important.  Then we work together to help them define their own values and expectations of themselves.

And then, and then typically I'll challenge them on whether the expectations of themselves that they're defining are really big enough, or if they could be doing more. And then we play. You know, we, we play, we experiment, we explore, we do whatever comes up in in that context.  

So when you say play.  What is play? I love that word and I love it when grownups use it, but in the real sense, not play, like color between, you know, in the, inside the lines, what color inside 

the lines.

Actually, I do for therapy, but that's another thing. Playing is exploring. It's experimenting. It's being willing to, to try things and make mistakes. It's willing to try ideas. Is willing to try on hats or, you know, metaphorical or real hats for that matter. If if, you know, style is one of your things, but it's that idea of, I mean, so far as I'm concerned, coaching is a dance.

It's two people. They, you know, they, they move together and apart and around each other and explore different angles, different perspectives. And that's play. Getting people who are generally a bit straight laced and uptight and worried and anxious. To do that is a process. You don't usually get there in session one, but if, if I don't get my client there, then I feel that I've failed.

So finding a way to get to play is very important to me. One of the other things that I get people to think about fairly early on is something that I wasn't  particularly conscious of until I heard Adam Grant talking about this just yesterday in his most recent podcast.  And this is the idea of, you know, whose values and he was talking about how if you think about every time you make a decision, ask yourself, is it in line with your values?

Or might I be doing this to honor my mostly dead ancestors? And if that's the case, you know, might it not be more interesting to think about doing things that might inspire my children or those who come after me?  And I thought that was a really interesting perspective and I have used it, but I'd never put it together quite as beautifully as the amazing Adam had done.

And it's, it's actually a very powerful image and in my opinion, it really is. So I won't take any credit for it, but I had felt my way into it a little bit. I also want to own something and, and be honest about it. I think there's a double game in this for me and for any parent probably. But if you're a coach and a parent, it can be particularly duplicitous.

And however hard I tried to bring up my four children. Well, I undoubtedly, I know, cause they've told me imposed expectations on them. Guess what? And now they're young adults. And you know, sometimes they come back to bat me in the face. And or we simply talk about it and I help them to unpick the less pretty stuff that I imposed on them.

And I remind them that they are free agents. Whatever I might have You know, consciously or unconsciously imposed on them earlier and to create the lives that suit them. And fortunately they do, you know, daughter one is a dancer, daughter two is a stunt artist, daughter son number three is a rugby playing chief of staff and daughter four is an actress.

So, you know, they're all doing stuff that I wouldn't necessarily have expected. But they're doing it well, and they're doing it with the kinds of values that I inspired in them, that's for sure. So sometimes, it's that thing of understanding what your values really are, if you have no understanding of who you are.

You can't really possibly expect to figure out what to do with your life.  And in terms of practical advice, I'd say, you know, there are many books and online tools to figure out what your values are, but there's one that I'd love it if you, if you referenced which is the black sheep model. Invented by this rather wonderful guy called Brent Menzoir.

And he's got a very simple online tool that'll help you to tease out your top five values. And anyone can do it. It's free. You just have to sign up, use an email. You can always unsign from his, his, you know, mailing list after that. But it's a, it's an easy to use and very powerful model. And once you're sure of the values that you actually have, then they're your foundation. 

And then you start asking yourself, you know, whatever decisions you're taking, Is it in line with those values? Is it, is it aligned with those?  And you know, sometimes, you know, there's that. Sorry, Claire, who wrote this? Brent menswear,  like menswear, but without the A, without the E.  Men's noir. Got it. Got it.

I'll send it to you if you don't find it. Okay.  I'll find it. I'm sure. And you won't, I can Google it, but I'll put 

it in the Yeah. And put it in the Definitely. It's worth it. I love that you started with values because you know, there's so many times when, because I'm, I'm a coach, but I'm also sort of coach slash guide.

If we working on someone's LinkedIn profile, I'll be working on someone's resume. Mm-Hmm. Yeah, values are important, but they're like, Hey, just show me the way, you know, but like, what, what, what's important to you? Right? I'm lost. Can you look at my, I got a message today. I'm lost. I'm in the middle of midlife crisis.

Can you look at my LinkedIn profile? I'm like if you're feeling the loss, there is a lack of alignment between your values and what you are professing, what you're practicing today. And so I'm so glad that you start from there because that is, that is, You cannot go like you cannot go wrong if you start from there,  

but of course, that's only a starting point, right? 

So then you've got all these opportunities to  To evaluate options to take decisions to take actions and you can question yourself around those  that you know, that emerge and you can question, you know, if I do this, will it be in alignment with my values? But the reality is that you still need sooner or later to be taking steps.

And we all know that just taking one tiny step in a new direction can be pretty frightening. But of course, it's also invigorating and empowering. And so just understanding that the fear of taking on familiar action, which is otherwise known as change, never really goes away. You know, often clients will come to me and say, Oh, you know, help me get rid of the fear.

No, can't do that. Fear is designed. For, for our own good, but learning to do things despite fear is what helps us to grow to improve things 

and 

courage is an outcome of those attempts. It's not a God given characteristic.  

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So speaking of fear, Claire, completely other end of the spectrum is this emotion, human emotion called love.

So let us talk about love.  The premise behind starting your latest venture  Loveworks with your co founder, this is your brand new baby. Let's say your fifth baby. I don't know. Fifth or  sixth. 105th 

probably. 

All the other sort of ventures you've had in the past.  I want to know how is that going? How are you finding the response in the market?

Is there anything like this out there? Have more love. At the workplace,  like, talk to us about what, what 

brought this on and how it's going. Sure. Well, it was born out of a long and ongoing conversation with a connection who became a friend, Jenny Mattel who I, I think, you know, at least a little bit, we spent hours weekly talking about the crazy number of lousy leaders that there are in the world, usually conflating that with men and the patriarchy. 

And while it was fun to bitch about that, we certainly, and we certainly weren't making it up as we were seeing real examples of it every day, either in our clients, in the C suite or around them.  But in the end, we wanted to do something about it. So we decided to seize the opportunity to create some simple thinking. 

The love in the title is an acronym as well as a crucial notion, and it stands for what we believe every leader should be doing, whether the CEO of a global company. Or the founder of the tiniest of startups, whether a junior manager or a project leader. And it means lead openly  and value human needs to create exponential engagement and impact. 

And behind that, we genuinely believe that love is the new corporate currency.  And we're really not talking about sprinkling heart emojis in emails or offering free fruit and bean bags and definitely not forcing you into some group fitness session at a defined time. Thank God. What is the case? Yeah.

What is the case is that love is a substantial, untapped human resource that can play a leading role in reversing many of today's toxic work, toxic workplace trends, which then frees up leaders to regain focus on other far more fundamentally critical areas.  Contrary to what a lot of people think, love isn't a sign of weakness.

It's brilliance in action. It means prioritizing wellbeing, starting at the top. Leadership demands sacrifice, but the twist is that we think we've cracked the code for renewal.  And we know that we're sculpting leaders who nurture human needs, those of connection, belonging, autonomy. Some of the things that I felt I was missing back in my corporate career and starting with themselves. 

Habits that really fuel mind and body and heart and spirit, ensuring high performance at work and home without burnout. You know, wouldn't that be amazing if we could get more of that? And there's more. We're not just shaping leaders. We're really looking to orchestrate a cultural revolution.  We want to infuse emotional resonance into daily practices. 

We want to champion people first policies through to decision making, to impact product, tech, and industry. Brand and more.  And our vision really is that we create a bunch of leaders and inspire others to do the same, who create and nurture cultures that nourish, inspire, and sustain a human touch that enhances business, sparks a global impact inside and beyond. 

Now, is anybody else doing it? It would be pretentious to say no, but we're confident that the work we've begun to do with our clients on a large scale, and by the way, we don't do small scale, was one of our decisions. You don't come and do a tiny thing. You commit to something big, you know, it's like play big or 

go big or go home.

I love it  because you've done the small, sweet stuff and you've done the big stuff and you've seen where the impact is.  

So, you know, we're prepared to say no and turn away from little engagements because we believe this needs to be big. And so we're, you know, what we started to do on a large scale is that sort of perfect balance between just a few yoga sessions that are retreats.

And the sort of laser cut effect of McKinsey Stark, often somewhat self serving observations on OD and beyond. We go further, and we definitely go more creatively, and we care nothing for convention nor status quo. 

Ooh. Can you, can you share how you do this?  

Well, I mean, the  

Without sort of giving away, without giving away your IP.

No, no, 

I mean, we're not, we're not necessarily  Using  any tools that nobody else is using, like we use coaching, we use assessment, we use the different tools in a toolbox,  but we use them with, I guess, a slightly different perspective and, and filter, which is that we want to be creating for listening. whole leaders who will inspire their teams to show up as humans.

You know, my simplest leadership theory is that organizations or groups of humans working with other humans, making products or services for humans and should be nice to each other and respect each other and collaborate with each other as humans, end of, that's it. And in the process, at its most pure, that also makes a lot of money.

In fact, it arguably makes a lot more money than when people are toxic with each other, because that leads to all the bad things that we know about, disengagement. You know, do you know, I'm sure you do, that more than 71 percent, I think, of the global population of employed people is currently They're extremely disengaged or very disengaged.

Yes. Yes. Gallop. It's not getting better. These figures are getting, I think they're getting more depressing. 

Yeah, they are. And so we want to change that. 

Yeah. 

So, you know, it's not a company, it's a venture, it's a movement. And, and we're convinced, you know, I'm 60. I could stop working tomorrow if I wanted to, but I've got a few years of this in me yet, because I just feel it's so important and fun. 

And fun and the sense of play. I love this. And, and, and I love that you've built this sort of with so much hard work behind you and your, you know, work, your reputation, everything speaks for itself, that you're not running around looking for clients, they're finding you. And you have reached the stage where you can say no.

To certain types of clients, because you see where will the impact be? Where will the scale be, you know, depth and breadth and that creates that lip that ripple effect. Right. So I love this. I'm so glad that, you know, you and.  Yeah, I, I don't know Janine personally, but yeah, exactly. I'm gonna, you know, continue to follow your and her journey.

And this is, I can't believe we're coming close to the end. Claire, we've gone over the time that we thought we would, but it has been so worth it. What a surprise. We said we would. And so Claire, if you could sort of.  Look back and see, you know,  since that fateful day, when you made that decision that, Oh, I'm not going to do journalism.

Oh, I'm going to study something else. And I'm going, you know, to one of these fancy colleges, go to the Far East and everything you've been through in, you know, South of France and the tip of the country and then Africa and all of these amazing places. Is there one standout defining moment that sort of comes to mind that you feel supercharged your career?

And helped you to move, you know, closer to your current success. 

Yeah, I think that It's hard for me to find one moment, but I think I can, I can see the, you know, the strong red thread. So I really want to emphasize if it's not become clear through this conversation, how much I really was not the poster kid for a strategic career.

You know, frankly, I lurched around a lot for at least the first half of my career, finding out a lot more about what I don't like. Then necessarily a clear definition of what I do.  And in the end, I was kind of forced into independence by, you know, market factors, if you like beyond my control, I had four mouths to feed, four bodies to clothe and school, and I had to get creative and I tried a lot of different ideas.

But in the end, I was really helped by the sort of testing and experimenting.  And actually it was once I was there and I found the confidence to define work in my terms that I could see that was never going to be a turning back. That was the moment I had to find clients who were happy to have meetings with the possibility of a child with a broken arm or a bare bottom showing up in the back of the Skype screen.

And this was long before work from home became commonplace through COVID. And, you know, having the knowledge in the, The acceptance of that need actually gave me the confidence to be pretty ruthless in my filter, filtering of potential clients. It was also helped along by one client who decided simply not to pay me a five figure sum that he owed me.

And that made me really review my criteria for who I was going to work with.  And I guess, no, that's developed into something that I just know. I feel it in my bones and my soul and my heart and my head that I'm doing the work that I was born to do humbly and modestly, I hope very enthusiastically and very enjoyably, and that can sometimes be confused for lack of modesty.

But you know, I'm all about enthusiasm and joy. There are other great coaches out there. No doubt. Many, many, many of them better than me, no doubt.  And that's before we even talk about chemistry and fit. I'm known in one particular circle as the colorful coach, the one who might speak a bit louder, the truths that she observes, who waves her hands around more than most and is not afraid to say what needs to be said.

Always kindly, but never stinting on truth. And I frankly can't imagine ever doing anything else for the rest of my life. And I'm certainly not envisaging retiring anytime soon. 

Oh my gosh, please don't. We, we need you.  The world needs more coming from the fabulous Claire Harvard. This has been, yeah, this is such a beautiful conversation and so much to learn from you.

I highly recommend. To the listener, follow Claire's journey on LinkedIn. You're always posting these beautiful photographs with the caption where all the treasure is in the caption. And then, you know, you're very random sort of observations in the middle. Oh yeah. Pretty 

random, 

but always deep, 

always 

deep.

Right. Yeah, always something, something profound. And Claire has a podcast as well. That you know is running with a fellow MBA Anan ard. I highly recommend you check that out. I was indeed privileged enough to be a guest back in. You were spring of 2021, couple years ago. My goodness. Yeah, it was three years, years ago.

I know, Matt. It just occurred to me  . So this has been a long time coming, Claire. Yes. Thank you so much for Yeah. Sharing so openly because this is how we learn. You know not just the trailer, but the movie, right. The, the, the, the ups and downs. So yeah, continue. We continue to, you know, wish you success and everything you do.

Lots of fun, lots of play  on your terms. Thank you so much for your time today.  

Thank you, Sonal. It's a great pleasure. Thank you so much for the honor.